Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Moving Stone

Got the call from the stone quarry this morning. They had a triple-axle load of crushed stone for me. Twenty-three tons of stone.

In an hour or so, as I worked on getting the last high spot out of the parking pad's bed, the truck backed into the driveway and deposited its load right where I wanted it to go.

 Twenty-three tons of stone.

Then it was time for Mr. Kubota and me to move the stone from the pile and fill the bed. For three hours it was back and forth with buckets of stone filling and leveling the parking pad.

 The stone on the left needs to go into the hole on the right.

 Filled and (almost) leveled pad.

I also filled a small gully at the end of the driveway and a low spot along the side of the driveway that just never seems to drain after it rains. (The fine, crushed stone from when they drilled our new well last year may have had something to do with that as that section of the driveway is where the water being flushed out of the well along with the tailings. Those fine particles must have made a seal through which water could not flow.)

 Partially filled low spot on the driveway.

I've still got some additional stone to put into the parking pad and some leveling to do. Luckily there's plenty of stone remaining.

 Still more stone to spread around.

I've some ideas of what to do with some of that stone: the area where Terry parks the Jeep during the summer and Aveo during the winter could use a couple of inches of stone. When that area gets wet, the soil turns to a very mucky clay. Anything left over will go under the deck where there's already a layer of stone. Adding another inch or two won't hurt.

Twenty-three tons is a lot of stone.

******

This afternoon I took the Toyota in to get its exhaust replaced, get inspected and, for good measure, get a new battery. It got done in a little over 2-1/2 hours. The worst part of the wait was that CNN was on the waiting room TV and, until everyone else left, I had to endure the worst news programming on TV. (Well, that's debatable. At least it wasn't tuned to MSNBC.)

2 comments:

Rev. Paul said...

23 tons is a LOT of rock. Good thing you've got the Kubota. (In my callow youth, I would've moved it with a shovel, and MAYBE a wheelbarrow.)

Re: CNN, at least a few people still watch that channel. MSNBC is just an embarrassment. :)

joated said...

Rev. Paul, I got a similar load of "top soil" from the same company the year after we moved in. At the time I had only the shovel and a wheelbarrow. I screened the stones out and use the soil for the raised bed gardens. It took me almost a year to move all the dirt.